


The Silence

by Pigeonsplotinsecrecy



Series: Flashes From The Past [3]
Category: 9-1-1: Lone Star (TV 2020)
Genre: Heteronormativity, Homophobia, Internalized Homophobia, M/M, Sexuality Crisis
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-02-18
Updated: 2021-02-18
Packaged: 2021-03-13 10:21:35
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,154
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/29524953
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Pigeonsplotinsecrecy/pseuds/Pigeonsplotinsecrecy
Summary: Carlos has to learn to live with the silence. It's hard when no one seems to want to talk about his sexuality while all he wants to do is talk about it (like any normal person in love)
Relationships: Carlos Reyes/TK Strand
Series: Flashes From The Past [3]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1419667
Comments: 15
Kudos: 135





	The Silence

Carlos learns that they don’t talk about certain things when he’s five and his mom talks in hushed tones with her sister about his lesbian cousin. It’s the first time he’s heard the word, and he doesn’t know what it means, but he catches the way the two women dip their voices like it’s a four-letter word. When he asks what it means, his mom looks nervous and her tone goes even lower. She gives a hurried explanation about how Fiona doesn’t like boys. She likes girls. Carlos is scandalized at the thought because Carlos doesn’t know how anyone could not like boys. He loves boys. Especially David. David has the coolest toy trucks in their kindergarten class. Carlos tells his mom as much. She laughs and says, “Carlitos, you’re too little to understand romance. All boys your age think girls are icky, but you’ll like girls when you grow up. You’ll be a heartbreaker some day.” 

He doesn’t think girls are icky. He knows a lot of nice ones, and he likes to talk to them at school. Emily who wears her hair in blonde pigtails and sits across from him is his friend, and so is Vanessa, whose mom makes the best cookies in the class. Girls are good friends, but they just don’t make him feel warm and fuzzy inside in the same way that David does. “Vanessa is silly for not liking boys,” Carlos decides. His mom clucks her tongue in response.

When he was seven years old, Carlos goes to Bible Camp at his church during weekdays in the summer. They sing songs and do crafts, and Carlos has a lot of fun making sculptures out of macaroni, and slathering paint into wooden cutouts of crosses that were bought for twenty-five cents apiece on sale at the local craft store. He gets excited when they talk about marriage during one class. They’re painting pictures of weddings. He likes the idea of being married. It would be nice to have somebody to love him for the rest of his life. He likes the idea of making a promise forever to just one very special person. They don’t say it directly that boys being with boys is wrong, but they keep saying that marriage is something for mommies and daddies to do. 

So, he paints himself standing next to a figure with a triangular dress. In the background, he paints a church, and he decorates it with flowers. He tells his teacher he put all the flowers there because his future wife likes them because the other boys would laugh at him if he said that he liked the flowers. They snicker at his comment, anyway, because they think he’s too sappy. His mom is charmed by the painting. She hangs the picture on the fridge, as she asks him about his “little fantasy girl.” She chatters happily about how much fun his wedding will be. He wishes he could tell her what he really wants, but he lets talk about her own wedding and falling in love with Carlos’ dad instead. Carlos likes listening to stories about his parents. His mom tells them with so much animation. Carlos wants to have someone he’s that excited to talk about someday. He wants a wedding with lots of flowers.

In middle school, it’s cool to call everything you don’t like or understand “gay”. An ugly shirt: gay, the wrong style of notebook: gay, talking affectionately about another male: gay. Gay, gay, gay— everything’s gay. It’s not the repetition of the word gay that bothers Carlos. It’s the absence of the word in any good context that makes Carlos want to ignore the feelings he thinks he might have. He doesn’t want to hear the word gay ever again because it hurts to hear it thrown around, but he doesn’t think he’ll ever be able to use it in a good way. He’s never seen that version in the unwritten dictionary of eighth grade. 

At seventeen, Carlos comes out to his parents, and they don’t talk about it. They tell him they love him, but they don’t ask him to elaborate. Their silence feels like displeasure, and Carlos doesn’t want to be the one to break the quiet, so he eats his breakfast and he pretends like he never said anything. He imagines his mother confessing what Carlos told them to her sister in a hushed tone. His dad’s always been a quiet man, but now, whenever they talk, it feels like a sputtering engine that never quite gets going. They go on as if nothing had happened, but something did happen. Carlos went from being terrified of what they would say to wanting them to say anything just so the uncertainty and nervousness in his stomach could have some resolution.

The silence follows them, but it keeps the peace. Carlos doesn’t want to interrupt the détente by bringing up information that they aren’t ready, and may never be ready, to handle. They’ll always love him, sure, but can they love every part of him? Can they love him without conditions? Can they show him love without having to grit their teeth as they do it? He knows that he can’t stay quiet forever, not if he wants to someday have that wedding with lots of flowers. Still, Carlos isn’t ready. After nearly a decade of silence, how does he even break through the thick wall that the silence has built between them? How does he go back to imagining his wedding day with his mother? She had her heart set on a stick girl with a triangular dress, and he knows that she still has that picture in a keepsake box. He wonders if she takes it out and looks with yearning. 

The silence agonizes Carlos, and maybe that’s why he falls in love with a man who doesn’t stay quiet when he’s angry because at least the anger leads to resolution. The silence is unending. He loves that T.K. rambles about inane things when Carlos is too exhausted or upset to add many words to the conversation. Carlos knew he was in love when T.K. talked for half an hour about different types of chocolate when Carlos felt weak on his feet but didn’t want to spend the evening alone. Carlos relishes going out in public and claiming T.K. as his. Carlos’ parents can’t know about T.K., but the rest of the cacophonous world can because Carlos can only stand so much quiet. What’s the fun of being in love if you can’t talk about it. Carlos wants to tell everyone who will listen. He wants to yell that he’s found a man who is everything he loves. He can’t share his love with everyone. The silence is still heavy in the back of his mind, but for now, a little noise will have to be enough


End file.
